The Almighty Tallest Zim
by MyPoltergeist
Summary: There have been many fics where Zim actually succeeds in an alternate universe. But what happens when his ascent to the throne is totally legit and in character? I don't really know either. That's why you have to read it. And yes, zagr is inevitable.
1. A Perfect Saturday Ruined

_**The Almighty Tallest Zim**_

_**Chapter 1 A Perfect Saturday Ruined**_

Wretched torrents of rain and hail attacked Gaz's window pane as the storm raged on outside. Her one light source in the room was flickering on and off threateningly and only the dark chuckle of the sixteen-year-old on the bed could be heard above the constant spattering.

_Only one level left before the final boss_, Gaz thought deviously when her Piggy Hunter annihilated the last Vampire Piggy on the game screen.

A flash of lightning briefly illuminated her dark colored room revealing dark purple carpet and a matching bedspread. On the walls were drawings that far exceeded the angsty teen doodles of her generation. They were true masterpieces of the gothic and surreal. Perfectly describing Gaz herself. When she wasn't playing Video Games (must be capitalized for emphasis on the sacred words) she was drawing. Not particularly unusual pastimes but for Gaz, they were all she had.

Right now our friend is experiencing what is commonly referred to as "The Zone", another sacred state of mind that calls for capitalization. It is what happens when everything else in the Universe disappears completely and the only thing that exists in the entire cosmos is you and the alternate reality that is the Game.

Gaz shifted from her stomach to her side, not once tearing her eyes away from her virtual adventure. It was the perfect Saturday morning. The rain was falling heavily, the carcass of a brother was off on some Zim-related mission, and the father was preparing for yet another life-altering announcement somewhere in a TV studio. She had the whole house to herself to do whatever she pleased (whatever she pleased being playing Video Games, pigging out, watching Movies, and sketching out her latest idea).

But the Piggies. They must be destroyed before any manner of peace was to be obtained. They must be first. Her fingers flew, her mind and heart raced, and all time ceased to exist. Nothing mattered except to get to the Zombie Hog.

**VICTORY! LEVEL COMPLETE**

Finally. Only one more level and she would have mastered The Game Slave Ultimate. This was the point of no return. She angled her Piggy Hunter so that he faced the Blood Hog Castle of Doom. Just as in the real world outside, it was raining and thundering in the game, attempting to intimidate the player. But as always, Gaz was unfazed. She marched courageously into the Hog's lair where her last enemy awaited. Prepared for anything, she wielded her wicked looking sword and assessed her surroundings.

The Hog. He was there. She knew it. He was _always_ there. But where? In every version of the Game Slave up to this point the final Zombie Hog had been in a different location in the Castle. She thought she knew all of his hiding places. She was wrong. Then realization hit her. She tilted the view of her screen to the ceiling. And all hell broke loose.

The Zombie Hog dropped with surprising grace onto the floor directly in front of Gaz's Hunter. Bearing his blood-stained Vampire teeth, he lunged at her player, nearly ripping his shoulder off. A determined look crossed her face.

_It's not that simple, pal._

The Piggy Hunter hacked and slashed at the opponent, cutting his life points in half in thirty seconds. Only half of his life points to go.

Every muscle tensed in concentration. There was nowhere for the Hog to hide. The phone rang downstairs. She ignored it. The TV announcer was warning of a major blackout that could occur in the whole city. She ignored it. Someone knocked on the front door.

Her head shot up. The Zone was shattered. Pizza.

Pressing the pause button on her Game, Gaz flung herself off the bed and wrenched open the door.

The young man delivering the Pizza was covered in acne from post-teenage stress and angst. He was skinny as a rail and judging from his oversized front teeth, he clearly was in desperate need of a good orthodontic treatment. But he did his job well.

Before the man even had time to say a very unenthusiastic, "Thank you for choosing Bloaty's Pizza Hog delivery service, that'll be $5.95," Gaz had fished out her wallet, taped the money to his forehead, and swiped the Pizza Box out of his hands. Giving him a quick salute she slammed the door in his face.

He stood there for a moment with his arms still outstretched as though he was still holding the Pizza Box until his brain (which had slowed considerably due to the infestation of pimples controlling his thoughts) decided to process what had just happened.

"Thank you for your patronage." he mumbled stupidly. And got back in his fancy delivery car. And drove off.

Gaz grinned greedily at her prize. Only $5.95 for the most heavenly substance this Earth had to offer. Ambrosia sent by the gods just for her. She set the Pizza Box down on the coffee table and plopped herself down on the couch in front of it. Her own long, violet hair almost curled at the sight of it sitting there. Pizza.

Gently, she opened the Box and lifted out a huge, unevenly carved slice. It dripped ridiculously with grease and cheese. That was all a Pizza needed. No frills like pineapple, mushrooms, or anchovies. Just cheese, sauce, crust, and that beautiful grease that was so generously smothered on her Pizza. I'm starting to gag as I write this.

Let the records show that on this day, Gaz No Last Name Provided For My Use has officially experienced the two greatest pleasures this world has to offer for teenagers. (If you're thinking sex, you and I are going to sit down and have a long, serious chat about the matter of teenage pregnancy)

Those two things being Pizza and Video Games. Somebody alert the press.

Just before she had a chance to chow down on another piece however, the doorbell rang. Gaz scowled at her peace and solitude being interrupted again but reluctantly went to the door anyway.

At first she thought someone had ding-dong-ditched her because all she saw outside was the rest of the neighborhood. Suddenly there came a very high pitched, squeaky, HI! From below. Her gaze dropped downward falling upon none other than Zim's obnoxious little robot slave, Gir. She glared down at him and tried to forget just how darn cute he was.

"What do you want?" she demanded. Gir opened his mouth to say something but no sound came out. He stood there for a second. Finally he closed his mouth and shrugged.

"I forget."

Gaz rolled her eyes and was about to turn around and go back inside but Gir gave a panicked,

"Wait! Master said to tell you something..." he scratched his metallic head as though he were truly attempting to remember the message he was supposed to give her. Gaz sat through a full three minutes of this. Finally his eyes lit up with recollection.

"I remember now!" Suddenly his adorable cyan eyes flash to a horrible blood red. Something equivalent to a tranquilizer gun popped out of his head and his voice turned low and ominous.

"Lights out Gaz-human."

The dart pierced her throat and everything went black.


	2. A Mysterious Ailment

_**Chapter 2 A Mysterious Ailment**_

The Massive lazily maneuvered a path through some galaxy far, far away (not to be confused with a George Lucas quote). It would seem as though all was right with Space and the Universe. But unlike the calm, care-free spirit outside the enormous ship, chaos was ensuing inside.

Everyone, from the most powerful Tallest to the lowest janitor felt it. The numbness, the strange pulling sensation, the occasional bout of diarrhea, symptoms almost completely unheard of to the mighty Irken race. Something was happening. Everyone knew something was happening.

The Tallest however, seemed to be getting the brunt of the epidemic. No matter how sick or odd a subordinate Irken felt, they were obligated to put their leader's needs before their own. Unless the subordinate Irken was hurling chunks, in which case they were ordered to report to the nearest bathroom immediately.

At that particular moment, our two Tallest were also hurling chunks except in their case they were hurling Mighty Irken Tallest Chunks TM. And although it got a cool name, they were none too happy about it.

"_Cannot_ believe this actually affected _us_," Tallest Red griped weakly, holding a rather large bowl, "we're the _Tallest_ for crying out loud, we're not _supposed _to get sick!" His companion had just finished heaving another bowlful and a very unlucky servant took it and replaced it with a clean one. And then he went off to presumably clean it out which is why his salary is through the friggin' roof.

Tallest Purple panted heavily but somehow managed a reply anyway.

"Tell me ab-about it," he clutched his sqeedlyspooch (for you humans, it was his stomach) and was in what looked to be a great deal of pain, "they never mentioned this in the job description." The other Tallest nodded grimly.

Red's personal servant perked up a bit at this comment and attempted to ease his rulers' minds with a little optimism. He might even get promoted for it. (He didn't get promoted for it by the way) Giving a little nervous cough to get their attention he said in a voice that was almost a whisper,

"Excuse me my lords but uh...since you are perfectly correct and there was no mention of physical illness or pain of any kind in that contract," he paled and sweated under their gaze, he wasn't used to them staring at him, "perhaps it can be arranged that the writers of such a contract be executed for lack of honesty to the Great and Almighty Tallest, eheh."

The Tallest pair glowered at him for a few seconds. Then they turned to look at each other for a few more seconds. The suspense was killing the poor little servant guy. But it's okay, he needed some excitement in his life. Finally, the rulers shrugged.

"Sounds good to me, you?"

"I'm fine with it."

"Excellent, find the guy who wrote that stupid contract, arrest him, and make sure it's the right guy _before_ you throw him out the airlock." Purple commanded, his strength already returning with the thought of an execution.

The servant bowed deeply and eagerly went to find the offending contract writer. Said contract writer died that day. And the servant didn't get promoted. But the story's not about them. So we don't care.

--

As the Tallest puke their guts out, let's take a journey back to Earth where Gaz's seemingly perfect Saturday has taken an unexpected turn for the worse.

"LET ME **GO** YOU STUPID LITTLE ROBOT!" Unfortunately for Gir, his captive had woken up a bit too early than she was supposed to as he was dragging her down the street in a net. But for the life of him, he just couldn't remember why he was dragging her down the street in a net. His eyes had gone back to their blissful blue glow and he was slurping a cup labeled SUCK MONKEY.

He turned and glanced back at Gaz's now conscious form laying very angry and very much without dignity on the pavement. And even Gir could tell she was pissed. He cocked his head at her as she desperately clawed at the net with her fingers and teeth. It was almost animalistic if you want to know the truth.

"If you don't get me the hell out of here, I'm gonna rip off your ugly, oversized head right off your ugly shoulders AND LAUNCH IT ACROSS NORTH AMERICA AT MACH 4!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME YOU RUSTY PIECE OF JUNK?! **MACH 4!**"

Eventually Gaz managed to get a grip on herself though it was not easy and the intensified rain wasn't helping. Gir just kept his bug-eyes trained on her. It was a wonder he wasn't short circuiting from the water. But that was the farthest thing from her mind at the moment.

Once he was certain the female had calmed down, Gir resumed his dragging and slurping. The Suck Monkey was filled to the brim with water at this point but he didn't seem to notice. Gaz just sat back, crossed her arms and pouted.

_Only in a cartoon, _she thought bitterly, _could an alien robot drag a sixteen-year-old kicking and screaming through a quiet residential neighborhood and not be noticed. _

The ride ended a few minutes later at what she knew would be Zim's stupid base. Gir opened the door and all but dumped the net covered Gaz onto the couch. Her eyes were swimming with the pain she was feeling. There's nothing worse than road burn on the butt. The little robot held out both of his two fingered hands at her.

"Stay riiiggghhht there," he said, "and I'll go tell him you're here!" Dancing and singing a creepy little song that sounded an awful lot like the word doom over and over again, he pressed a red button on the wall and a hole opened up underneath him. His eyes went wide with terror as though he had no idea what the button would do and plunged screaming into the hole. The cover painted to look like the floor replaced it and the screams muffled.

Gaz quirked an eyebrow at the manic little demon's idiocy but decided not to dwell on it any longer than was necessary. She had some more pressing questions to attend to that didn't include wondering why "intelligent alien life" was so stupid.

Question 1: Why was she here?

Question 2: Why was she here?

Question 3: WHY THE **HELL** WAS SHE HERE? Do I need to mention question number four or do you see a pattern developing?

The net's holes were two small to get her feet through and the whole thing was too small to stand up in to walk. All in all, the dumb contraption was simply too small for any escape attempt. So she tried rolling which didn't really work either and the only thing she succeeded in doing was earning a thump on the head. Compliments of the floor.

She was about to roll over to the door when she saw that Gir had in fact cleverly removed the knob, most likely at his master's orders.

"Grr, where's E.T. when you need him to phone home for you?" she snarled to herself. Disgusted by her own failure, Gaz lay on her back and counted the stucco clumps on the ceiling. Hey, it's not like she had a video game.

Suddenly she heard a noise, like something flowing through the plumbing. It got louder and louder as she squinted over to the source of the noise. The kitchen. That oddly placed toilet. Dib had once mentioned something about the toilet being one of Zim's entrances to his base.

_Damn, he's coming..._

Gaz tried to look as nonchalant as possible as Zim rose in what I suppose he thought to be a majestic pose...from the toilet. She smirked at him.

Same Zim that was there eight years ago. Same ridiculous looking melon colored dress/uniform thing, same black gloves, same weird backpack he never took off and same eccentric scowl. The only difference? He was tall. Taller than even Gaz herself, though she would never admit it.

He sauntered his way over to where she lay, narrowing his blood-red eyes and deepening his scowl.

"What are you doing?" he questioned, finding it rather unusual that his prisoner was twiddling her thumbs and whistling while obviously in the evil clutches of an alien invader. She turned her head to face him and pretended as though she just noticed his presence, irritating him. Which she enjoyed. After a long pause she said,

"Counting the stucco clumps."

He leaned down and lifted her to her knees by her collar and began to chastise her using his nasally, not very threatening voice that made him that much more of a laughing stock to society.

"This isn't the time for sarcasm filthy Meat Sack! Do you not even realize who-

"I'm up to 213." she said blandly, flaunting her fearlessness in his face. A bemused look came over him.

"Eh?"

She rolled her eyes and pulled his unguarded hands off of her shirt front.

"213. You interrupted me so I only got to 213 stucco clumps. But there were more. Now we'll never know."she said angrily, trying to sound like she actually cared about the clumps just to confuse him.

Zim stared at her for another moment or so. He could tell already that this was going to be a looong hostage situation.

"Gir!" he barked once his lucidity came back. Flashing a dutiful red, Gir was instantly at his side.

"Take the human to Experiment room 6 and put her in a containment tube with _Nick_," he grinned at her wickedly and Gaz vaguely wondered what could possibly be so scary about someone named Nick. But on to the matter at hand.

"Why did you bring me here, Zim?" her voice dripped with a thick coating of severe annoyance which was still intimidating but much more preferable to the alternative. Which was hatred.

If possible, the green alien's smile grew broader. Reaching into his pocket which she hadn't known existed until now, Zim pulled out a 3" by 4" photograph of her eighteen-year-old brother, Dib. He knelt down to her level and held the picture in front of her eyes.

"Take a wild guess."


	3. Miserably Failed Escape Attempts

_**Chapter 3 Miserably Failed Escape Attempts**_

Gaz's first thought was, 'Oh my god, he killed Dib!'. Her second thought was, 'Does that mean I can auction off all his stuff?'. And third thought, 'Not as long as I'm here, I can't.' The evil grin was all it took to unnerve Zim. Decision made, she worked up a fairly large amount of saliva and spat in the alien's face, fully aware of the effect it would have on him.

Zim's eyes bulged as the spit began to sizzle and burn at his superior skin like some sort of acidic chemical. It was then that Gaz put her not very well thought out plan into action. As Zim shrieked and squirmed on the floor, she snatched Gir from where he was quietly watching the scene a few feet away, and hurled him screaming out the low window, shattering the glass. That was the easy part. Rolling _over _toand out of the aforementioned window was going to be more difficult.

Eventually however, with much effort and determination, our heroine did manage to make it out the window. But by the time her body painfully connected with the ground, Zim had dealt with his saliva problem and was not really okay with her at the moment.

Gaz struggled down the concrete path to the street for all of about twenty seconds. The horrible flamingos seemed to taunt her and the guard gnomes didn't know what to make of it all. They were in awe. It was an epic battle between man and net! Until Zim casually opened the front door of his house, sauntered down the concrete path, past the flamingos and gnomes, and interrupted the epic battle between man and net. Shaking his head at her, he casually bent down, casually picked her up, and casually brought her back inside.

-

"My Tallest!" A short, squat Irken dressed in a lab coat burst through some automated doors that he was in too much of a hurry to wait for. He was holding up some sort of digital book as though it might explode any second as he raced down the hallway that lead to his leader's chambers.

Red and Purple were still tossing their extra terrestrial cookies and were feeling rather cruddy but probably nothing on blessed Irk could have prepared them for the news they were about to receive.

"**MY TAAAALLEEESSSST!!"**

"Would somebody shut that guy up, I'm trying to wallow in self pity here!" Tallest Red whined.

The two guard Irken thingies bowed respectfully, but kept out of range.

"Excuse him sirs," one said, "but he says he knows the reason for this madness and the cure for the symptoms...perhaps you'd like him shown in?

One glance at each other was all it took.

"GET HIM IN HERE!"

-

_Why the heck does this kid keep grinning at me? I mean seriously, what's he got to be happy about?_ _There's no Pizza, no Video Games, and worst of all, no Pizza!_ _I just don't understand this Nick person I guess...What on Earth is that thing in his head? That's definitely gotta be making spleen contact at this point._

"Are you ready to hear my ingenious plan, human? I had the glass on the containment units strengthened just for you. Don't you think that was clever?"

Gaz, who was exceedingly uncomfortable at having to share a skinny containment tube with the happiest kid on the planet, had to crane her neck to actually see Zim entering the room from behind. There wasn't much movement that could be achieved inside this thing. She was so squished up against Nick, she could hear his heartbeat. It was gross.

"Answer to question one: No. Answer to question two: No, considering you should have installed strong glass in the first place. Now let me out of this damn thing before I...uh...I..." She looked around for anything that could be used as a weapon but found only Nick, still grinning, and still creepy. Zim found this amusing, because all militaristic alien societies are hard-up for entertainment.

"Ha! Puny slug! There's no way to escape this time, as your clearly discovering in the most unpleasant way possible, and so you have no choice but to listen to me. So there."

But Gaz had one more trick up her sleeve and her eyes lit up when she realized this. Again, it was not very well thought out but hey, she could worry about escaping a convoluted alien base later. Her only thought at the time was to get away from Nick. And he was going to help her.

Without warning, she reached up and yanked the whatever it is out of Nick's head, relieving him of his constant joy, and smashed the tube with it. Apparently, Zim had gone from really brittle glass to regular glass, which shatters on contact with metal brain probe. See he's kinda stupid.

Zim just gawked at her.

"Okay, really?" He inquired, incredulous, "Well what do you think will happen now? No wait, let me tell you what's going to happen. You will sit down, shut up, and LISTEN TO MY WICKEDLY DIABOLICAL PLAN OF **DOOM!!!!!**"

Way too many doom references. Thank you Johnen. Thanks a lot.


	4. Kidnaping' Gaz

1_**Chapter 4: 'Kidnaping' Gaz**_

**Author's Note: I suppose I should be writing disclaimers, huh. Okay I will, but let me take this opportunity to say that if anyone thought my writing was good enough to sue, I would be honored.......I do not own Zim. **

-

The Irken scientist fumbled with his glasses, fingers trembling violently. You would think that since he was the top researcher on the planet he could spring for contacts. But you would be wrong. And beside the point.

Muttering apologetically, he was finally able to balance them on his face in front of his bulbous green eyes, which was actually quite an accomplishment considering he had no nose to speak of.

The Tallest's pulling sensations were growing stronger but the other symptoms were starting to ebb, mainly due to the fact that there was absolutely nothing left in their squeedly-spooches to heave up. Needless to say, neither of them were in a very patient mood, however, even they understood that a few wasted seconds could be tolerated if it meant the discovery and most importantly _cure_ of the sickness.

Our little scientist friend whipped out his digital notebook, preparing himself for the worst. They weren't going to take this lightly, of that he was certain.

"Ahem...uh, my Tallest, my fellow researchers and I have done an extremely extensive search regarding the subject of this plague, and I'm afraid sirs that we were eventually forced to go to the law books on this matter. This is no typical ailment we are dealing with here," he took a deep, shuddering breath, and went on, "this goes far beyond our medical sciences, right straight into the heart of our political system."

He saw the guards creep up behind the Tallest, his cue to drop the bomb. His timidity suddenly slipped away, as though planned, and he stood up straighter, more confidently. He held up his notebook and began to explain further.

"Red, Purple, the sickness and pulling sensation everyone has been feeling are definite signs that you have been replaced."

Red and Purple looked at each other, dumbfounded. Before they could say or do anything however, the guards had them in a headlock. Not to hurt them, just for restraining purposes. He began pointing to complicated diagrams and charts.

"These sensations are telling us that another Irken has indeed grown taller than either of you. In other words my _'Tallest'"_ he taunted," you no longer rule." Insert wicked smirk here_ "Snack on _that._"

Burn.

-

Gaz pouted. It was something she did often, so she was very comfortable with it. In fact, she was so comfortable with it, Zim began to wonder if it was something he said. The skinny alien racked his sqeedly-spooch (brain) to try and remember what he might have said that would have offended her. So far, he had nothing.

_Just a human brat not even worthy of my attention, _he told himself. He hadn't given her even a minuscule reason to pout and here she was, arms folded, glaring off into space.

The human had long since realized that escape just wasn't going to happen, cry, cry, tear, tear. So she just sat there cross-legged on the floor, pointedly looking away from him just to make him mad. Which she enjoyed.

Every time Zim would make a move to insert himself into her line of view, she'd just spin around again. One time when she spun, she actually grabbed his leg and took him down with her, drawing from him a great big, OOF!

Tired of his captive's little shenanigans, Zim finally was forced to grab her face and make her look at him, which he hated doing, especially when it looked like she was about to spit. But he sucked up his courage and did it anyway, for the good of his plan. He couldn't wait to see her face when he told her all about it, and for a brief moment, he was almost caught up in imagining her amber eyes going wide with terror, all defiance or fearlessness scraped away. But it was a _very _brief moment and not so much anything sexual, but more of a power trip. He took a lot of those. They amused him.

Gaz didn't look very happy about having her face defiled by incompetent alien hands but she also did not make a move to stop him, because one way or another, she was going to have to listen to his stupid plan anyway. Might as well be now.

"Alright E.T., what going on in that STUPID noggin of yours? I'll probably kick myself for asking, but if it gets you off my back..." she shrugged.

Zim hastily let go of her face and struck a heroic pose, looking like he was about to recite something from Hamlet.

"Oh geez, kicking myself already."

She was ignored.

"You have probably already guessed human, that I have brought you here because of your WORMY **pig-**headed, _brother."_

"Yeah, gathered that when you shoved his picture in my face, and speaking of which, why do you keep his picture in your pocket?"

"SILENCE!"

"But really-"

"I'LL ASK THE QUESTIONS HERE!"

"Oh, are you the good cop or the bad cop?"

"......what?"

-

"This is insane, who could possibly be taller than _us?_" Red griped on his way to the de-throning room, which he didn't even know existed until now.

The two former tallest were making their way down a long, dark corridor lit only by old fashioned, flickering bulbs. Having recently discovered they were not in command anymore, their raging fits subsided into immature states of denial. The fact that any Irken had exceeded their equal height of 5'6" was, to them, positively ludicrous. Even though back in the year of the Neldarb, Tallest Kapooki reached an incredible record of 6 feet tall. Needless to say, he was more of a god than a ruler. He later died of a squeedly-spooch attack. Little fun fact there.

Purple tried pulling at his metal restraints and when he didn't get very far with it, started panicking. Neither were used to being treated with anything but the utmost respect and found this new set-up quite disturbing. Not only had they been stripped of their Tallest uniforms and put into commoner garb, but their new superiors had ordered that they be served whole meals...no snacks. It was an outrage.

Red was more annoyed than anything else.

"So I suppose the crew are just automatically going to know how to run the Massive?" he asked, incredulous. The guard behind him smirked and prodded him in the back with his beeping spear doohicky which sent an electric current through his body.

"They always have before."

Red hissed at the pain he hadn't felt since before his time as Tallest. Purple kept having long lapses into stunned silence followed by increasing bouts of comical hysteria, which is why he was prodded by the alien cattle goad many more times that day.

When they reached the door of the de-throning room, each was read their new rights (not many) and publicly told of their fallen status. The entire Irken audience booed and hissed their former leaders off the parapet. They may have been popular when they were tall, but none of that mattered anymore, now that another had taken their place.

This reminded them that they had no idea who the new Tallest actually was. When they tried to demand an answer out of their room guard, she just laughed and filed her green claws casually.

"You'll see."

Not helpful.

-

Meanwhile, back at the lab...

Nick and Gaz and Gir sat on a table, legs crossed, staring at Zim. He was a little too engrossed in his own synopsis of the plan, and was now acting out his victory quite theatrically.

"And not just ANY laser, oh no, no, a _special _laser just for _Dib. _Once I have him lured to Irk with you as bait, his only choice is to watch as I am crowned the Tallest in front of the entire planet! THEN I'll destroy this petty, filthy dirt ball with said laser and make him wish he was never BORN in the process! MUAHAHAHAHAAAAA!"

Gaz rolled her eyes and looked down at Gir sitting next to her.

"How do you live with him?"

Gir shrugged.

"SO I've got the Voot Cruiser ready in the back room, the equipment and biscuits are in storage, and the hostage seems ready for kidnapping. Well, guess that's it!" Zim strode majestically toward Nick's discarded brain probe and picked it up.

"And so you won't get bored while we're gone," he plunked it back into the hole in Nick's head, then handed him a plate of waffles with an evil smile, "knock yourself out."

Gaz gave a sigh of irritation and exhaustion from the day's activities and trudged after Zim to the Voot. If there is any hope of stopping him, she thought angrily, it's through those doors. There's more Pizza waiting for me at home, and dammit, I mean to eat it! Vaguely wondering why Zim hadn't thought of this obvious plan a long time ago, she took a passenger's seat next to Gir and strapped herself in.

"So," she asked the robot, "what does Irk look like?"

Gir looked at her with blank, expressionless eyes. Zim chose that moment to board the ship himself, looking as haughty as ever. Gir pointed to his master.

"Him."


	5. Voot Cruiser Nonsense

1_**Chapter 5: Voot Cruiser Nonsense**_

The Voot Cruiser was not very cool. It was tiny, round and _pink. _Apparently, Irkens liked their transportation systems to match their clothing because it was the same color as that awful invader dress Zim always wore. Now that she really thought about it, Gaz realized he seemed to be all about the color pink.

_Maybe that explains the churning feeling in my stomach._

The teen gothic girl took in all of the gadgets and gizmos around the ship she was in with one sweep of her angry eyes. She was a little surprised. There was nothing she couldn't have imagined herself or seen in a cheesy sci-fi movie. _Everything _was typical alien, right down to the green skinned, bug eyed pilot himself, who had now donned a purple space suit that made him look all the more ridiculous.

Of all the weird places she'd been to and all the strange predicaments she'd found herself in (ie: haunted houses, Atlantis, Junior Prom...), Gaz couldn't shake the feeling that maybe, just _maybe_ this was the weirdest. The future was nagging at her queasiness. Zim had mentioned something about being the "Tallest" and it was only when she remembered the time she found out what being tall meant on his planet that she began to get worried. Being kidnaped, having the Earth endangered, yeah that was out of the ordinary and all, but the idea of Zim as some sort of king did not sit well with her.

Aforementioned alien grinned smugly, taking her silence for a respectful one. Which earned him a scowl.

"What are you smiling at, you creepy reptile?"

Zim chuckled softly and shook his head, one of the sanest things she'd ever witnessed him do.

"Imagining the look on your brother's _disgusting _face when he finds out I've captured his sister."

"You know I can just knock you out and take control of this ship myself at any time don't you?" she inquired, calmly lifting an eyebrow, "I'm simply along for the ride because I enjoy something new once in a while. Trust me, if I have anything to say about it, this little plan of yours won't last long."

Her confidence unnerved Zim for a second. Then he remembered his little leverage and the grin returned.

"Ha! Puny earth creature! You make one move toward me and THIS BUTTON" - he pointed to a button - "WILL **DESTROY** EARTH ONCE AND FOR ALL!"

"Okay, even if that button did make Earth go kaboom," Gaz replied, rubbing her temples, "you'd still be the worst invader in the history of ever because you waited _this _long to actually use it!"

Now it was Zim's turn to scowl. He stuck out his way-too-long-to-be-normal tongue at her and screamed in agony when she grabbed it and closed her other hand around his throat. Gaz was about to say a few choice swear words and beat him senseless against the dashboard when she noticed a little something that caught her attention. A red glow that flooded through the cockpit. They were Gir's eyes. The little robot who had been unusually quiet throughout the trip was poised over the 'Destroy Earth' button, his little metal hand hovering two inches above it.

As soon as she released Zim, Gir's eyes turned back to blue and he waved blissfully. She made another tentative grab for Zim's neck but the SIR was quicker on the draw, his eyes flashing red once again and ready to make Earth a ball of dust. She backed off. So did Gir. She raised her hand half-heartedly toward Zim who was now grinning and making a thumbs up sign at his robot. Gir's eyes went back to red. Frustrated, she plopped back down in her seat.

"Great."

Brushing himself off, Zim cautiously inspected his poor tongue, making sure he had his back to the little human menace.

"You're gonna be the first one to go when I have the Earth enslaved." he muttered.

"Whatever."

Zim's eyes brightened.

"Which reminds me..." Switching the Voot Cruiser to autopilot, he stood up and whipped out a camera.

"We still have to let the Dib-human know where his little sister is," he swung his arm around Gaz and pulled her close to his side, aiming the lense at them both, "BIG SMILE!"

The camera flashed and in an instant, Zim had sent the picture to Dib's computer. Zim is stupid. We all know that. He once tried to dry his underwear in a microwave and was completely baffled when they caught fire. He's stupid. We know that. But don't ever, _ever _accuse him of not being able to work computers, controls, or cameras. Because before Gaz even had a chance to look surprised, her ransom note was sent to Dib's laptop in the form of a picture labeled, 'Come and get her.'


End file.
